Why is it that we are supposed to pray to the saints for help?
We have established, as Orthodox, Christians, that we may pray for the intercessions of the saints. Just as we pray for one another, on earth, we expect that those Holy ones who are particularly close to God will continue praying for us after they depart this life, and wee send them our requests, and we expect them to hear us, just because they are with the Lord and filled with the Holy Spirit. WE experience from these prayers, very often, miracles of different types and “sizes” from a simple sense of peace, to a resolution of a crisis, or even the appearance of a saint to us in a dream or vision. But the question that naturally follows is, “Why?” What makes prayers to the saints so powerful, in a way our own prayers to God never seem to accomplish?
So, the Lord told us in the gospels that if we ask anything in His name, His Father will grant it to us. There has been much speculation about what “In My Name” means, since, this is clearly not a formula for how to make God into a “wish fulfillment vending machine”, as I’ve heard some call this idea, that God will basically just do what we want because we asked. Using the phrase “In Jesus’s name” as a sort of closing salutation at the end of an extemporaneous prayer? Definitely not it. Perhaps it does mean, “according to My good will” or “in the way that I would pray”, or “representing Me to the Father”, but how can any of us common sinners pray in such a way?
Our prayers are weak, self-centered, proud, coming from distracted minds, from impure hearts, and with motives that we don’t know or understand. Our requests can be too vague, too specific, or completely off-topic, aiming at something we don’t need. But wait, isn’t it God’s job to know what we need and decide whether and how to answer our prayers? How can the quality or accuracy of our requests play any role in this process of supplication? I would like to suggest, for the sake of a better understanding, that these things matter because of their impact on us, and not on God. When we take a request to God, and ask for what we need and want, we are creating an opportunity to experience God’s help. But if we do it “wrong,” by asking for the wrong things, or by having a demanding or selfish attitude, even when we get our answer, we might not even see it as such.
A woman was driving around the packed parking lot at the mall, trying to find a space. She begins to utter a half-hearted prayer, “God, help me find a…” and suddenly a spot opens up right in front of her… “Never mind, I found it myself.” This is the way we tend to live, is it not? The imagination fills in the details that we want to see or feel. We miss the reality of what is happening, and we believe ourselves to be much better than we are, or fall into other delusions. So if we don’t recognize the answers to our prayers, we won’t be thankful, and if we are not thankful, we become proud. And if we do get the answers we want, even then we can become proud because we believe our prayers to be powerful, and we glorify ourselves, even silently, for praying, rather than God for His help and love.
In a mysterious way, however, asking for the intercessions of the saints is a solution to this conundrum. In the first place, we pray to God all the time, we pray the Jesus Prayer, we say our morning and evening prayers, which includes prayers to the Holy Trinity, together, and separately, and we pray to the Theotokos, the Saints in general, the saint of the day, our patron. All of these are part of the daily prayer rule of a regular Christian. But when we make a special effort to request the intercessions of a particular Saint, we likely break down this “prideful prayer” problem. Now, instead of an answer to prayer “going to our heads”, it lands in our hearts. Now we know that this particular Saint or these few saints, prayed for us and God reached in and blessed us for the sake of that holy person. Now we can’t falsely “take credit” for the results of our prayer. Instead, we feel deep gratitude to the Saint and to God for the answer that came. The saint was born as normally as we were, and had a life that probably progressed rather normally, except that they chose a path that led to holiness in the Orthodox faith. So we feel close to that saint for his similarity to us, and we also feel a sense of awe that God blessed that person with holiness in response to his repentance and movement toward doing Gods will with complete abandon.
I pray for my dad, Steven, a lot, quite habitually, but when I visit the Lavra and go into the big reliquary in the basement of Holy Trinity Cathedral, I always encounter several icons of St. Stephen, including one which contains the saint’s still extant right arm, right under glass, incorporated into the icon. On these occasions, I pray for my dad especially, because now I’m facing this saint with the same name as my father, and I can use that as a sort of “hook” for both me and St. Stephen. I assume that since he and my father share a Christian name, St. Stephen will happily pray for my dad. And I remember to pray extra for my dad, from my heart, because I encounter St. Stephen. So if my father ever, God willing, embraces the true faith, I will not be saying “look what I did for you, by my prayers,” heaven forbid! I will know that St. Stephen’s intercessions for my father were effective because God honors the prayers of His saints.
Why must we pray to the saints? For our humility.
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